Multi-Sensory Dining: A Dinner for All Five Senses

A multi-sensory dining experience is a meal designed for more than the tongue. The sound in the room, the colour of the light and the plate, what you hold and walk on, and the story you are told are planned together with the food, because each of them can change how that food tastes. The idea has a growing body of research behind it, some of the world’s best-known kitchens have built menus on it, and near Johannesburg it has taken an unusual form: an 11-course dinner in the Cradle of Humankind built from a memoir, with a song for most of its courses.

This page sets out what the research has found, in plain terms, then walks through that South African dinner one sense at a time.

What multi-sensory dining means

Flavour is not made by the tongue alone. The brain builds it from taste, smell, sight, sound and touch together, which is why the same mouthful can seem different in a different room. Le Cordon Bleu describes the trend as dining that involves all five senses, with restaurants using smells, sounds, storytelling and other elements beyond the plate to change how flavour is perceived and to make a meal more memorable. It quotes the Oxford psychologist Charles Spence, whose point is that everything counts, from the colour of the plate to the weight of the cutlery in your hand.

The difference from a restaurant with good atmosphere is intent. In a multi-sensory dinner, the music, the light or the setting is chosen for a particular dish, the way a sauce would be.

What the science says

Some of the best-known evidence comes from Charles Spence, who heads the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at Oxford University. In a 2010 article for The Psychologist, the magazine of the British Psychological Society, he summarised the findings below. They describe how people rated food in experiments; they are not promises about any one diner or dish.

Sound

In one study, people bit into crisps while their own crunching was picked up by a microphone, altered and played back to them through headphones. When the sound was turned up, they rated the crisps as noticeably crisper and fresher, although the crisps were chosen because they are all but identical. In another, bacon-and-egg ice cream tasted more of bacon when diners heard bacon sizzling than when they heard a farmyard of clucking chickens.

Colour and light

Colour pulls taste in a direction. Spence reports that a Riesling was rated nearly 50 per cent sweeter under red lighting than under blue or white lighting, and that adding the right amount of red colouring can make a drink taste up to 11 per cent sweeter.

Story and expectation

Expectation does much of this work. Spence notes that wine experts can be at least as swayed by colour as casual drinkers, probably because they hold stronger expectations about what a wine of that colour should taste like. What you believe you are about to eat shapes what you notice. A story told before a dish is one way to set that belief, and many immersive menus, including both of the dinners near Johannesburg described below, come with one.

Where chefs have taken it

Le Cordon Bleu’s survey of the field names some of the best-known examples. At The Fat Duck, Heston Blumenthal’s “Sound of the Sea” serves seafood with the sound of the ocean, played from an iPod inside a conch shell. Grant Achatz’s Alinea in Chicago is known for plates that bend genres, including a dessert inspired by Jackson Pollock. Paco Roncero’s Sublimotion in Ibiza fuses gastronomy with virtual reality. The same survey also mentions Ultraviolet in China, Schloss Schauenstein in Switzerland and El Celler de Can Roca in Spain.

These kitchens use sound, art and technology to steer the senses. The dinner in the Cradle of Humankind uses a place, a memoir and a soundtrack.

A South African table, sense by sense

Dinner with a Story is served at the Dare2Dream Dome Restaurant at Forum Homini Boutique Hotel. It grew out of Upstairs Downstairs: A Musical Memoir, in which Karina Marais tells her life through words, lyric readings, songs and videos, and the dinner adds what a book cannot. Her restaurant’s website describes the split: the book brings sight and sound, and the dinner adds taste, smell and touch. In the closing chapter of her memoir, published as an extract by the Sunday Times, she describes the idea:

“

The dinner becomes a multisensory experience in this enchanted setting as sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch come together in an 11-course FUN dining and wine pairing menu—interwoven with the food from my memoir.

There are 11 courses. Nine are served as acts, each a tale from the memoir, one of her songs and a dish, and two, a grappa and a sorbet, are pauses in a lit forest. The course-by-course guide to the evening covers the menu in full; here is how it works on each sense.

Sight: coloured light, a forest, a dome

The evening is lit like a stage. Her published photographs show a neon-pink Dare2Dream sign over a boardwalk edged with warm light, trees lit green, magenta and violet, and steel sculptures of women whose bodies turn into branches. At the end of the path stands a geodesic dome of clear panels, lit purple, blue, teal or red, with a giant butterfly sculpture inside.

The light follows the food. Get It magazine reports that each dish is paired with its own colour: the Purple Pears, for one, are served under purple light, and part of the evening takes place at a red-lit spot deep in the forest. Even the crockery is specific: Core Catering, which supplied the tableware, says it developed plates designed for the venue. No one has published a test of these colours on this menu. The research says only that light and colour can change how sweet a food or drink seems.

Sound: a song for every act

Nine courses have a song of their own, drawn from the 32 tracks, including a medley, on her three albums. Several are named for the dish they accompany, such as “Snow Crab, Versace & Muffins” and “Hainan, O Hainan Chicken”. The grappa and sorbet in the forest come with music from the albums rather than a single song. At the launch in November 2025, according to a guest who wrote about the night, Karina told stories from her life between the songs and talked about the food.

The fifth course shows how the pieces fit. The Purple Pears arrive early because, in the film The Taste of Things, marriage is compared to a dinner that begins with dessert; she writes that Living Apart Together keeps her and her husband in that “dessert phase”. The song that goes with it is below.

Taste and smell: dishes built on memories

Every act is a memory served on a plate, and the tale comes before the taste:

• Candyfloss (course 1): a childhood wonder that vanished in the mouth, “leaving only sweetness and sticky fingers behind”; the mocktail is poured over it.
• A first macaron (course 2): offered to her in 2004 by a New York Stock Exchange director, after she presented her board game.
• Soup like a cappuccino (course 3): from a 2006 dinner in Sydney that began with pea soup in an espresso cup under froth; here, a cappuccino-style tomato soup.
• Caviar and cava (course 4): the celebration on the day her first song arrived.
• Coffee, glazed ginger and marshmallows by candlelight (course 11): the last course, tied to the Swan Cups, two cups sharing one saucer.

Smell comes through most strongly at breakfast, which is served on selected days: croissant in steaming hot milk, after her mother’s rainy-day treat of bread, sugar, hot milk and cinnamon; and lamb tails with putu pap, from a late-1960s morning on a Karoo farm when the tails were thrown onto an open fire, the fat sizzled and the smell was, in her words, “rich, smoky”. At dinner, the last course brings coffee and glazed ginger by candlelight.

Touch: walking the path, crossing the bridge

This dinner is not eaten in one chair. According to Get It, the courses move from the Forum Homini lounge to the entrance of the forest, to that red-lit spot, and then to the dome. In the extract the Sunday Times published, Karina describes the dome as transparent and set in the forest, reached by a fairy-tale walkway and a bridge over a stream. Guests feel the boardwalk underfoot, the night air and the bridge before they sit down for the main part of the meal. Her restaurant’s website says guests use the Swan Cups at the dinner, and her guide ties them to the last course. On the launch night it rained, and every guest was given a raincoat and an umbrella.

Other immersive dining near Johannesburg

Johannesburg has at least one other well-reviewed example, built on a different idea. Time Out Johannesburg reviewed Le Petit Chef: Au Naturel at the Blueberry Hill Hotel in Honeydew in May 2026. It uses 3D projection to animate a tiny chef on the tablecloth, with synchronised music and a story about foraging and the ocean told across six courses, and optional wine pairings from HER Collection, a women-led South African wine brand.

The two are complementary rather than rivals. Le Petit Chef brings the show to your table; Dinner with a Story moves you through a forest to a dome and builds its courses on one person’s memories and music.

How to get the most from a multi-sensory dinner

• Arrive on time. The evening is a sequence. The launch programme began at 17:00, with a walk to the dome at 19:00, so arriving late means missing part of it.
• Hear the songs first, or save them. You can play her albums before you go, or let each song arrive with its dish.
• Read one chapter. The dessert-first course makes more sense after chapter 7.6, “Love’s Logistics”.
• Dress for walking outside. The route runs over boardwalks and a bridge at night; wear shoes you can walk in and bring a layer.
• Tell the kitchen in advance. Forum Homini publishes no dietary policy for Dare2Dream, so raise any needs when you book.
• Book early. The dinner runs on selected days only, through Forum Homini: reservations@forumhomini.com or 071 533 1019. The dinner page has the menu and a booking email you can fill in.

For a couple, the dinner can be the centre of a longer day: a plan for two in the Cradle adds the fossil caves, a cave-style suite and breakfast.